Part 4 — Three Weeks Before the Wedding, I Canceled Our House, but When I Asked Lukas One Question, His Smile Disappeared

At the end of the message was one sentence: “If this is correct, Lukas no longer needs your signature.”

In the hospital corridor, the phone hung in my hand.

“What document is it?” I asked Karen.

“I cannot explain it over the phone.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“Before buying the house, Lukas created a power of attorney in your name. As if you had agreed that he would make all financial decisions.”

Lukas was standing behind my back.

“That is impossible,” he said.

Karen’s voice sounded through the phone too:

“Then you will see for yourselves at the public registry.”

Lukas looked at David.

“Tell her that it is a formal document.”

For the first time David refused to defend him.

“No, Lukas. I cannot say that.”

“You are my lawyer.”

“I was. From this minute, I am not anymore.”

Lukas threw the phone onto the table.

“Are all of you against me?”

“No,” I said. “It is simply that for the first time no one is helping you hide the lie.”

That same evening I returned home. Karen was already waiting there. On the table lay a folder, a laptop, and a small voice recorder. The recorder had a scratched white dot on its side—exactly like the memory card.

“I obtained this from Lukas’s office,” Karen said. “His assistant contacted me. She was frightened too.”

We listened to the recording.

Lukas’s voice sounded in the room.

“Nora will sign everything. She is a calm person. She will cry for a while, then realize that she cannot do anything without me.”

Emma’s voice followed:

“What if she does not want to stay with you?”

“After the wedding I will have access to her accounts. She will have nowhere to go.”

I closed my eyes.

These were his words.

His voice.

His coldness.

For five years I had explained this man to others: “He is simply tired,” “He is simply not romantic,” “He simply has difficulty expressing feelings.” Now I was listening to his own voice and understood that he had never been confused. He was simply certain that I would never leave.

“I will give this to the police,” Karen said.

“To a lawyer first.”

“I have already found one.”

My new lawyer, Elene, came the next day. She was holding a dark green folder and did not touch the table with her pen while speaking.

“The power-of-attorney document is forged,” she said. “The signature was transferred from an old rental agreement.”

“Is that why he did not need my consent?”

“He thought the registry would not notice. But you had a different electronic-signature pattern.”

“The house?”

“The purchase has been suspended. Your name is protected. Lukas will have to return your money.”

Those words did not resemble victory. They simply resembled the silence that appeared in the room, in which I could breathe for the first time.

Lukas came to my door that same evening.

“Give me only ten minutes.”

“No.”

“Emma is expecting a child. I cannot abandon her.”

“I am not asking you to abandon her.”

“Then why are you leaving me?”

I put my hand on the door.

“Because you had already been living with someone else for a long time. I only found out today.”

“I love you.”

“Love does not demand financially locking a person in.”

“I made a mistake.”

“For five years?”

He could not answer.

“Nora, I need you.”

“No. You need a person who will justify your choice.”

Lukas took hold of the door handle. On that same handle, there had once been caught a small fiber of my wedding ribbon. Now only a sticky mark remained.

“We built this house for us,” he said.

“No. I built a place for you where you would always feel free. And you made a prison for me out of it.”

He lowered his head and left.

Several weeks later, our date at the wedding hall was given to another couple. The photographer returned my money. I sold the dress to a woman whose eyes held such happiness that seeing her did not hurt me for the first time.

Lukas’s case reached court. He accepted responsibility for the forged power of attorney, returned part of my savings, and moved on to a child-care agreement with Emma. I neither pursued his punishment nor watched his life fall apart.

I simply no longer saved him from the consequences.

One morning, in the courthouse waiting room, Lukas’s voice recording was officially played. Elene, Karen, and his new lawyer were sitting there too.

When his voice sounded—“Nora is a calm person, she will cry for a while and then realize that she cannot do anything without me”—Lukas raised his head.

For the first time he was hearing his words through someone else’s mouth.

The recording ended.

“I did not mean it that way,” he said.

Elene answered calmly:

“You said it yourself.”

Lukas looked toward me.

I said nothing.

After court I returned to our old apartment. His things had already been taken away. In the bedroom only one empty shelf remained, and our wedding invitation lay on the floor. On the wall, beneath Lukas’s photograph, there was a bright rectangle of dust.

But what hurt me most was the small piece of wood with which he had repaired the broken handle of my favorite cup. The cup stood in the kitchen cabinet. I did not throw it away.

Three months later I rented a small apartment in San Francisco, with a bookshelf near the windows. In the mornings I worked at an architectural studio, and in the evenings I walked through the city streets. For the first time in years I was choosing the color of the walls only because I liked it.

In December the first snow came.

My nephew, little Elliot, stood by the window and was drawing a house on paper. Its roof was crooked, and the doors were very large.

“Is this your house?” I asked.

“No,” he answered me. “This is the house from which you can always leave.”

His answer struck me so that I smiled.

“It is a good house.”

“Will you live there too?”

“Now I already do.”

I received Lukas’s last message in March.

“Emma and I are living separately. The child was born. I know that I ruined many things. If you are ever ready, I want to talk to you only once.”

I looked at the screen for a long time.

Then I wrote:

“I wish you to become a better person for your child. But I am no longer offering you a return to my life.”

He did not reply.

That evening, in the kitchen of my new apartment, I took out the same broken cup. The small piece of wood still held the handle firmly. I poured tea, went to the window, and watched the snow.

For five years Lukas went to Tahoe in order to live his real life.

And at last I came home—to myself.

The cup no longer trembled in my hand.